


A Kind Of Opaque Fact

by Thia (Jennaria)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe, Carlos's Team of Scientists - Freeform, Christian Theology, Episode: e049 Old Oak Doors Part A, F/F, Gen, Headcanon, M/M, Miskatonic University, Original Character(s), Speculation, Spoilers, Which is not from Lovecraft dammit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-10-05
Packaged: 2018-01-21 22:42:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1566674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jennaria/pseuds/Thia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things everybody knows.  Some things everybody knows better than to even ask about...unless you're a scientist.  Then you ask anyway, and see what happens. (Series of one-shots, mostly about Carlos and his scientists.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Why and How Dr. Carlos Ramirez Went To Night Vale

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to thesilentpoet for beta-reading!

Every once in a while, Miskatonic University sends a group to Night Vale. (Please note: this is Miskatonic University of Tupper Lake, New York, _not_ the entirely fictional Miskatonic University of the equally fictional Arkham, Massachusetts. Real Miskatonic alums and faculty don't have much of a sense of humor about it, either. _You_ try decades of people making jokes about having Cthulu in your basement, ha ha, and see how much of a sense of humor about it _you_ have, wise guy.)

Miskatonic University has an arrangement with Night Vale Community College, whereby they have ten openings for a post-doc position to do, well, pretty much anything. People arrive from Miskatonic every so often, but 'every so often,' just like 'every once in a while,' is flexible enough to encompass as little as three months, and as much as seven years. The exact length of time between arrivals depends on a long list of factors, including:

\- How many scientists they sent last time. Or anthropologists, or historians, or (on one memorable occasion) an English major. The post-doc is available to any doctoral student, but mostly it's the hard sciences who actually apply for it. 

\- Whether the last group was even able to _find_ Night Vale. Most groups get lost on the way at least once. Three groups haven’t been able to find the town at all. There are theories why this is the case, ranging from Night Vale not actually being in our dimension, to ‘they knew we were sending Dr. Siuda and they thought he was an asshole too’, but nothing substantiated as of yet.

\- Whether their contact at Night Vale Community College has forgotten the group is coming, and failed to arrange matters with the City Council. This may or may not be connected to the issue above. The administration at Miskatonic only know it's happened at all because they got a very apologetic note afterwards, delivered by carrier pigeon.

\- Whether the last group was wiped out, every single one of them, in one of Night Vale’s all-too-common Incidents.

\- Whether the last group was wiped out, every single one of them, in an Incident that was really obvious and avoidable and _haven’t you ever heard of running away_. It’s bad enough to lose people in something like the Dust Fire of '83: most of the town burned to the ground, so really it would have been a miracle if their people survived. It’s worse when it’s a question of failing to listen to the radio and take simple precautions. Holidays in Night Vale are deadly! Cecil talks about this fact all the time! Why the late Dr. Robinson would still decide to have a Cinco de Mayo office party is a mystery for the ages.

\- Whether someone just _returned_ from Night Vale and has been telling stories about the aforementioned Incidents to prospective applicants. They all sign an NDA, but sometimes the returnees lurk around dark corners and whisper stories about human sacrifice and long-dead gods and _did you know, you can't even use pens, it's illegal_. 

\- Whether Miskatonic can find applicants to go to a place where the death rate is ridiculously high. Miskatonic’s statisticians are bewildered how the city hasn’t just collapsed in on itself from lack of population. Not bewildered enough to go themselves, though.

The post pays twice the rate of any other post-doc that Miskatonic offers - not just physics post-docs, _any_ post-docs. It’s officially for one year, but can be extended indefinitely. In theory.

As of 2012, nobody had ever extended. And then Carlos Ramirez and his team headed out.

As of 2014, Miskatonic hasn't sent anyone else. Not because they haven't had any applicants, but because Carlos - and most of his team - are still there, still alive, still reporting back (even if some of those reports are WHAT THE HELL THIS SHOULDN'T BE HAPPENING). Miskatonic is not going to mess with what's apparently working.


	2. Drink To Figure Things Out, Maybe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After one week in Night Vale, the scientists are starting to find their feet. Maybe. They're trying, anyway. In the meantime, they'll drink and eat pizza, because you can't science all the time, no matter what Carlos says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sure to be jossed if and when they get around to telling us more about Carlos's scientists, but in the meantime, here, have some of my research team headcanon!

By the end of the first week, they'd already figured out they needed to use the buddy system, so Dave stayed behind with Adam while the rest of the scientists headed out to get food. At first, they talked about their results (which at this point meant less 'actual results' and more 'what are we gonna focus on studying,' because Night Vale wasn't the kind of place where you could figure out the answers to anything in just a week). After about twenty minutes or so, though, Dave got up. "I'm going downstairs for some alcohol. You want to come?"

"Wait, we got booze?"

"No, it's - oh, wait, sorry, you were out at the seismographs. Jinny and I discovered a closet downstairs in the basement, with all sorts of bottles."

"Annnnd...you thought they were alcohol?"

Dave shrugged. "They're labeled. Some of them are in Spanish, or Cyrillic, or in ancient runes of some probably long-dead language, but there's some regular old Absolut and Tanqueray too. We can open them under the hood if you think --"

"Nah," Adam interrupted him. "So long as it's not just ancient runes, we should be good."

By the time Carlos and Rochelle came back with a couple pizzas, a few bottles of soda, and the news that the rest of their group had decided either to go to Arby's or stick around Big Rico's for the daily special, Dave and Adam had brought up most of the alcohol (they'd left the bottles with labels that were unintelligible, untranslated, or that said CURSED DO NOT OPEN). The four of them settled down with plastic plates, and beakers Dave had washed out, and started eating.

By the time they'd demolished a pizza and a half, plus two bottles of Coke, one of Fanta, and one of vodka that might or might not actually be Absolut, everyone had relaxed a little. Rochelle raised her beaker of half-soda, half-vodka, and said, "To not worrying what's going to come crashing through the door!"

They all drank, then Dave said, "To forgetting we're being watched all the time!"

"Well, shit, now you jinxed it," Adam said, and drank anyway.

"Your turn, then," Rochelle said, raising one eyebrow all Spock-like.

"Easy. To surviving our first week!"

They all drank, even the boss, but Rochelle laughed as she drank and nearly choked, so Dave had to put down his beaker and pound her on the back. "Sorry," she said once she could breathe again. "Sorry, but - this from the guy who refused to ring a doorbell." 

"None of us would go up and ring the doorbell," Carlos - Carlos! - pointed out, before Adam could even say anything. "We can't even prove what, exactly, is going on - whether the house is in a slightly different dimensional plane from our current existence, or whether it's some kind of extremely complicated visual illusion that somehow doesn't work on film, or some third option that hasn't yet occurred to us. Which reminds me, Adam, what tests did you actually run on the house? The only test I know about was Pearl's photograph that showed a blank space."

"What kind of scientific tests would determine existence?" Dave said thoughtfully, staring down into his nearly-empty beaker.

Adam winced. "So far, not much. You know about the photo and the doorbell." He'd tried to throw a rock through a window. The rock just vanished without even a ripple. He was pretty sure that didn't count as scientific, though, especially since he hadn't written it down. "Look, the rest of you had left, so it was just me and Jinny standing there staring at it, and some guy showed up out of nowhere. He said he was from NVCR, asked what I was doing, and I just...I dunno."

"Made something up?" Rochelle shook her head "Adam -"

"I _know_ , it's bad science." Especially here in Night Vale, where they couldn't be sure their equipment wasn't lying to them in the first place. Carlos did a whole speech about it before they ever left New York. Fuck, wasn't like he didn't feel guilty enough already. "We can try thermal imaging, or maybe sonar," Adam said. "I just - I didn't think 'well, it doesn't show up in photos and it scares us' would've impressed your boyfriend."

"Shut _up_ , Adam," Dave muttered, not quite in time before Carlos said, blankly, "What?"

Adam looked from one to the other. What the hell? "The radio guy?" he said. How the fuck had the boss _missed_ this? "Who has a crush on you?"

"You weren’t here," Rochelle said, to Carlos, not to Adam. "I don't know if you've been listening to the radio --"

"Of course."

Rochelle winced, even thought Carlos hadn't sounded angry or anything, just sorta confused still. "It was one of the mid-day updates, right after your press conference. We caught it on the way in. The guy on the radio was talking about the conference, and he said your hair was perfect, your teeth were perfect, _you_ were perfect, and he was in love."

The boss blinked at her in that what-the-fuck way he got, then looked down at himself like he was trying to see what Radio Guy saw. Adam didn't get it either. On the one hand, it was an old running joke, which undergrad would come down with a huge crush and spend the entire semester hanging around the physics office like that would drag Carlos out of the lab. On the other hand - Carlos Ramirez was a couple inches shorter than Adam. He had black hair that was all over the place unless he slicked it or tied it back, brown eyes, brown skin, and right now he wore an old pair of glasses with tape in the middle like some kind of geek stereotype. Carlos was dressed okay - nothing with holes in it - but he wore a lab coat on top of it, because he put on a lab coat whenever he even thought of going to the lab, and then he would forget to take it off. Adam had known Carlos for two years, and he'd seen him _without_ a lab coat three times. Whatever Radio Guy had seen, Adam didn't see it at all.

Finally, Carlos gave up on whatever he was looking for. "He didn’t say anything," he said, and held out his beaker to Rochelle, who still had the bottle of vodka.

"Didn’t say anything when?" Dave asked.

Carlos drank off the swig of vodka Rochelle had poured, then said, "I stopped by the radio station this afternoon. I’d meant to ask them to put out the word about the surveys Pearl is doing, but then this started to go off." He reached into the pocket of his lab coat, and pulled out a black box that looked like a cell phone, until he turned it on and held it up.

It was a Geiger counter - not the orange kind that looked really bright and obvious, or the kind that was a box and a sensor like a microphone, but the subtle kind, the kind you brought when you didn't want people to notice you taking radiation readings, although in Night Vale people probably wouldn't give a shit. But maybe it wasn't a Geiger counter after all, because Adam knew what a Geiger counter ping was supposed to sound like, and it _wasn't_ the cheeping of baby birds.

"Is it really working?" Adam tried weakly.

"I checked," Carlos said. "So did Rochelle."

"Huh," Dave said. He leaned forward and snagged the vodka bottle, absently filling up everyone's beaker. "So that was it? You picked up extreme radiation in the radio station, but the sound is wrong?"

Carlos nodded eagerly, picking up his beaker again. "And the people aren’t behaving as if they’ve been exposed to extreme radiation, yes, exactly. I can only conclude it’s like the earthquakes, or the missing house. There’s some kind of disconnect between the reality that our sensors are picking up, and the reality that our human senses are experiencing."

"So all we have to do is isolate and quantify that disconnect," Rochelle finished with a wide, toothy grin.

Dave nodded thoughtfully. "We could do worse for a mission statement," he agreed.

"Gotta be better than ‘that place is weird, go figure out why,'" Adam said, but he agreed, too.

Carlos raised his beaker. "To finding answers in Night Vale," he said, and they all drank.


	3. Someone Had To Be The First

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The research group from Miskatonic loses the first of their group - possibly in a literal sense, as opposed to merely metaphorical. It's not clear, but then again, when is it ever clear in Night Vale?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted this to be fluff to make up for the way canon is putting us through the wringer. ...um. Sorry, y'all. Someday, fluff shall still be achieved!

From the records of Carlos Ramirez:

Pete is dead.

Actually, I can't say that for certain. It would be more accurate to say that we lost him, even though it sounds as if I were attempting to avoid the subject. That's not entirely true. I knew death was a possibility, we all did. But after the first few weeks, we'd become accustomed to narrowly avoiding death. Perhaps Pete became a little too accustomed.

All my information is second-hand, unfortunately, but Adam refuses to write up a report. He's sitting in the back of the lab with his lab coat over his head, and if any of us approach him, he starts singing "The Song That Never Ends" as loudly as he can. Lexie brought up one of the unlabeled bottles from downstairs and set it next to him, so he's been singing less, but I don't think that will help any with his making an official report. Which means it's up to me.

So. Pete.

We all have our pet problems. Rochelle lingers in front of the house over in the Desert Creek housing development, trying to nerve herself up to at least _approach_ it; Lexie is trying to rebuild a seismograph from scratch with exclusively local materials to see if the needle will stay still; and Dave's been helping me with my calculations about time in Night Vale - to pick three examples at random. Pete...well, Pete started out investigating ritual theory and practice in Night Vale. The investigation quickly wandered away from such possibly practical things as bloodstone circles, and off to the one person we've heard about who claims to be able to do magic. Unfortunately, that one person was the self-proclaimed "Apache Tracker," a racist jerk who has already managed to piss off most of the town - especially Cecil - and promptly added most of our team to the list. The exception was Adam, who claimed he admired the guy 'ironically' and 'for his guts'.

A few days ago, Cecil announced that the Apache Tracker had mysteriously vanished, and so had his house. It's not the first mysterious disappearance Cecil's mentioned, not even the first he's reported with absolute glee. It _is_ the first time anyone has said, _hey, we should check that out._ Of course, the scientist in question was Pete.

We tried - _I_ tried to talk him out of it. We didn't know exactly when the Apache Tracker vanished, or where he'd lived. We already had one mysterious house, we didn't need to add another. We had insufficient information, about the Apache Tracker himself, about the situation at the Post Office that he'd been investigating, about why and how he might have vanished. Pete insisted all my objections were irrelevant, and he could find out what was going on. "We knew the guy," he said. "He's not just some bozo on the street."

Adam agreed to go with him - not to the Post Office, which was Pete's first suggestion, but at least to the site of the missing house. Adam has told me - in fractured words like puzzle pieces - that they agreed to head out at 3 PM, together. He repeated _together_ over and over, as if he thought I wouldn't believe him.

I'm not certain how or why they didn't meet up that afternoon. The puzzle pieces didn't fit together in this particular section: at first Adam said he did go, then he said he was distracted by the migration of flamingos running down the street, despite the fact that it really wasn't that unusual by Night Vale standards - the flamingos did nothing but run. Whether Adam went or not, he lost sight of Dave.

Adam said the next thing he knew, the next provable fact, was three voice-mails popping up on his phone, all dated 5:27 PM, September 21, 2012. The voice-mails were still on his phone, and he played them for us. Let's see -

"Hey, Adam. Don't know where you went - you know the boss is gonna be pissed for you wandering off, right? Whatever. Anyway, I think I've spotted the location of the house. There's this lush meadow right in between two other houses, so either someone's been going way overboard on their watering or there's some strange shit going down again. Catch up to m--"

"Adam? Damn, this went straight to voice mail. Call me back. There's this voice telling me - shit. Just call me back as soon as you get this."

"...it's okay. It's all okay. I was a little worried earlier, but you can just delete those voice-mails. There's nothing to worry about. The meadow's nice. Everything is nice. You don't need to come. Stay home. It's all just fine."

Adam started looking for Pete around 3:30 or 3:45, he said. By the time - significantly later than 5:27 - he came back to the lab to ask for help, and suddenly discovered he had voice mails, the rest of us had left for the night. He tried to head back out, to ask for our help finding Pete, or else to try looking for him, but it was already after curfew, and he got dragged back to the lab by the Sheriff’s Secret Police. He protested, he said, and was told that whatever had happened, had already happened, and he should resign himself to the truth that is all of our inevitable destruction. He insisted those were their exact words, and I believe him. 

He either napped here for a while, and headed out early to look for Pete, or managed to escape during the night. The puzzle pieces don't match up. Adam clearly saw Pete, or where Pete had gone, but his description wanders off into incoherency about distant worlds and the ever-encroaching void and windows that look out onto nothing. He clearly managed to return to the lab, because I found him sitting on the front steps, shivering like a man caught in freezing wind, but he can't tell us how, any more than he can give a scientific description of what he actually saw.

Jane Smith - our official Night Vale guide from the City Council - said that in Night Vale, the proverb goes, “Curiosity killed the cat. No, really, resurrecting the cat with grisly necromantic rituals won’t help, we’ll just have to kill it again, please stop.”

Of course it does. I don't know why I expected anything else. I think I'll go join Adam in a drink.


	4. Things The Scientists Don't Talk About

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the obvious (the Dog Park) to the slightly less obvious, to the probably actually pretty obvious if you think about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, Faye Noire, for the world's quickest beta read!

**1\. Sarah Sultan.**

They don't _officially_ report to Dr. Sultan, and she's not the one who signs their paychecks. Even Carlos isn't sure who _does_ sign their paychecks. The City Council? Someone back in New York? Someone with hands, anyway.

(Not Strex. They checked every way they could. Besides, if it were Strex, the pressure would be a lot more direct.)

So Dr. Sultan isn't officially their boss. But, as the president of NVCC, she can make their lives a lot easier or a lot harder, and not just in the sense of drawing snarky caricatures of Carlos and his perfect hair. Every time they order new equipment, she's the one whose name is on the delivery slip. Every time they start a new project, they have to run it by her to make sure they're not headed straight for a Talk with the Sheriff's Secret Police.

So no matter how tempting it is to start speculating about how a fist-sized river rock became president of a community college, the scientists from Miskatonic keep their mouths shut. It just makes life easier.

**2\. The Apache Tracker.**

This one is an official rule. At first it's because nobody can talk about him without it turning into yelling. Then it's because Pete is missing-dead-gone, searching for the racist asshole, and for fuck's sake the asshole himself is missing-presumed-dead too. Drink to forget.

Then the Apache Tracker reappears. The radio claims it's the same man, transformed into a Native American and only speaking Russian, but still the same man. Adam stalks out of the lab as Cecil says this, and nobody tries to stop him. He comes back an hour or so later, knuckles bruised.

"You okay?" Carlos says quietly.

"He doesn't remember," Adam says, biting out the words.

"Doesn't remember you?"

"Doesn't remember _Pete_."

That's the end of all research on - and all voluntary contact with - the Apache Tracker. Carlos sometimes regrets that, after what happens at the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Fun Complex. _Did_ the man remember them after all? Why did he sacrifice himself for Carlos? Why anything, really?

After That Night - after everything that happened, including Cecil - Carlos goes back to the lab. He finds all of the others from Miskatonic waiting there, and they wrap him up in the most enormous group hug he's ever experienced. They all stand there, not talking for a moment, and Carlos finally lets himself believe that really, he's _alive_. (Cecil didn't prove that. If anything, talking to Cecil made him feel less real, because how could anything real be this wonderful.) 

Finally, he says, to no one in particular, "What was the Tracker's name?"

Someone makes a _mm-mm_ sound, as if to say _don't know, don't care_. After another second, though, Adam says, "I don't remember." After another second, "I'm sorry."

**3\. Angels. The Dog Park. The Night Vale Waterfront and Recreation Area. The Shape (that used to be) in Grove Park. Etcetera and so forth.**

Some battles are worth fighting, and some aren't. The trick is to figure out which is which, before you get called in for re-education over something that you don't even care about.

(Re-education, in Carlos's experience, means writing I WILL NOT ENJOY BOOKS - or something equally ludicrous - a hundred times, in chalk, on the chalkboard. Adam's come home with blown eyes and slurred speech a couple times, so Carlos knows he gets off easy.)

**4\. Dana**

They don't actually talk about _any_ of NVCR's interns if they can help it. They die (or vanish) too quickly. It's become a morbid joke, the times when the scientists all wind up dropping whatever ongoing research in favor of figuring out how to save the town from Current Crisis That Threatens To Unmake The Universe Itself. "Do it for the interns!"

Dana...is a special case. Not because she survived the longest (which is true, but with an asterisk, for multiple reasons), but because she's Rochelle's girlfriend. 

It's not that way at first. At first, the rest of the team takes it as the perfect opportunity to finally get an insider's view on how Night Vale _works_ , and it's all incredibly awkward because Dana grew up in Night Vale, and what do you mean you never knew about geographical loops before?

"Is this what it's like talking to Cecil?" Lexie asks Carlos, after one particularly embarassing afternoon of talking themselves in circles before discovering that what _they_ meant by basic astronomy, and what _Dana_ meant, had even less overlap than previously assumed.

Carlos flushes. After calling _Cecil_ in the middle of mental, emotional and scientific breakdown, rather than any of his research team - and the proof thereof being broadcast on the radio - he can't claim Cecil is _just_ a valuable resource any more. "Yes," he mutters.

"I am so sorry," Lexie says.

Then Poetry Week happens, and Dana vanishes. Rochelle spends a week very quiet, writing both her civically mandated poems and some extra, just for her, then dives back into the mystery of the House That Isn't There. Nobody notices any odd behavior - well, no odder than expected for someone who just lost her girlfriend. 

Then Cecil mentions, on-air, a text message from Dana. All eyes go to Rochelle, who's bent over a microscope that decided it didn't feel like working today. She looks up long enough to meet Dave's eye, nod once sharply, then bends back down over the microscope.

She doesn't read aloud her texts, or play her voice-mail messages for them. Not then. Not until much, much later, months after having her girlfriend walk through her as if she were a ghost, and a few days after she tried to follow Dana into the mysterious alternate dimension inside the House That Doesn't Exist. Until Rochelle talks about Dana on her own, the rest of them keep quiet. It's only polite.

**5\. Harrison Kip.**

The group from Miskatonic isn't the only group from Outside here. Usually, Outsiders stumbled across Night Vale by accident, or were kidnapped by the town. (Carlos still isn't certain whether that's literally a thing or not. The regular arrivals at the airport of flights that were intended for New York or San Francisco or heaven knows where else might have some alternate explanation, he just hasn't been able to think of it.) 

The thing is, Night Vale only has two settings. You adapt, or you die. Sometimes you adapt and die anyway. 

Sometimes, though, people come into Night Vale - people like Professor Kip - and last long enough to try to insist that reality should bend back the way it used to be. Pearl tries to gently tell Kip that archaeology in Night Vale doesn't follow the same rules as it did back in Providence. Night Vale walks a fine line: nothing here is 'normal,' but they seem to _know_ what _is_ normal to Outsiders, if only occasionally. (Maybe it's just Cecil. Maybe it's just on the scientists' recordings of Cecil's show. The recordings already compress themselves into one hour, two on a good month, instead of 30. What's one more artifact of change?)

Kip doesn't believe them. He insists that there is Truth, that archaeologists have found it, and that Night Vale should understand. After that, Pearl - and the rest of the team - leave him alone. Either he's headed for disaster, or he's adapted to Night Vale after all, in all the wrong ways.

**6\. Cecil.**

When the team first arrives in Night Vale, half their conversations are about the man on the radio. Is he telling the truth? Why would he lie? Is he helpful? Is he leading them astray? Who is he, and can they use his apparent instant crush on Carlos to their advantage?

(No. No, they won't. Carlos has standards, dammit, even if the rest of them don't.)

Adam doesn't like Cecil. Lexie doesn't trust him. Pearl doesn't say anything. Jinny changes her mind depending on her mood and what Cecil's said about Carlos lately. Dave likes him, and Rochelle is his cheerleader, even before she starts dating Dana, who absolutely idolizes the man. After the Telly Incident, Lexie actually throws a beaker at Dave when he suggests there must be a reason for what happened, besides her Cecil Is A Creepy Creepster theory.

Carlos never hears about that part. The other scientists keep their mouths shut. They're all adults here, they don't have to drag the boss into it, especially when the boss already has enough issues with the guy.

Nobody's sure when, exactly, those issues get sorted out. They go from 'I am just calling him for science reasons," to "Sorry to bother you," to, finally, publicly, "I am calling for personal reasons." After that...well, there's maybe a _little_ gossip about the boss and his boyfriend, but really, even Adam and Lexie admit they're disgustingly cute together. 

**7\. Home.**

Pearl's family emigrated from Syria two generations ago. She speaks Arabic fluently, just as fluently as she speaks English and Spanish and German and Russian. Her mother calls every Thursday and they talk for hours.

Dave grew up in New York City. His parents own a bakery, and Dave still bakes whenever he feels stuck on a scientific problem. After the ban on wheat and wheat by-products, he led the experimentation with gluten-free alternatives. He emails his parents twice a week. The Secret Police have been known to stop by when something happens to delay one of the emails, because Dave and his parents include recipes, and they always turn out delicious. The kolaches are everyone's favorite.

Rochelle's family still lives in Dorchester, Massachusetts. One brother died at fifteen from a random shooting. Another won a prize for his writing at eighteen. When the City Council denied Rochelle's petition for a visit home for her niece's christening, Rochelle went down there to demand a review in _person_. She came back to the lab with permission for all of them to go home, if they wanted.

Lexie's family writes her letters on paper. Before her, the most rebellious kid was Jim going into the Army instead of the Navy like everyone else. They've stood by her as she transitioned, and went into science, and took the position in Night Vale. Her dad invites her home every month or two. Night Vale is in Arizona, right? That's not far from Oklahoma.

(The Sheriff's Secret Police keep trying to recruit her, or failing that, to have her invite her family to come visit. So far, Lexie has turned them down every time.)

Adam's dad and mom divorced when he was a kid. Mom lives in Seattle with Other Mom, Dad lives in Los Angeles. They chat on Facebook every day.

Carlos grew up in New Jersey. He speaks Spanish with what his grandmother claims is an embarrassingly American accent. His aunt and uncle who live in Pine Cliff - whose number his mother insisted on giving to him before he left for Night Vale - assure him he's perfectly understandable, and that's all that matters. He visits them every few weeks, and lets them drag him to Mass.

They all had homes. They all have family. They all have ties outside of Night Vale.

But one by one they have stepped into the bloodstone circle in City Hall, sliced open their left palms, and taken the oath. The only hold-out is Adam. He hadn't yet done it when the yellow helicopters arrived, and he refuses to swear to Strex. He has standards too.


	5. Hark The Herald

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On angels, and Night Vale, and angels in Night Vale, and whether to be afraid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone else listens to Renovations and draws Cecil's triumphant return. I, apparently, write about angels. What is my brain.

Angels are real.

*

Night Vale, of course, deals with this by decreeing that you're not allowed to admit this in public (and you're really not supposed to admit it in private either). Rochelle finds it easy at first. Those beings at Old Woman Josie's place, they're _not_ angels, not the way she heard about them growing up. Angels were these blond white people with enormous fluffy wings. Maybe, on special occasions, you got a brunette. Always white, though. Her preacher talked about cherubim and seraphim, terrible creatures of wings and eyes and fire, but to Rochelle, those didn't count as angels.

Josie's visitors are a lot closer to the terrifying, awe-ful beings of those Sunday sermons than they are to anything on a Christmas card. They loom over Rochelle (or anyone else), spreading their golden or black or scarlet or white wings, blinking the eyes on their hands or arms or neck or chest. 

But they just aren't _scary_. Maybe it's because Josie talks to them as if they're especially dim puppies, and you can't really be scared of anything, even a looming, multi-eyed, winged being, that's being ordered around by a woman who's four foot six on a tall day, and keeps mislaying her glasses by putting them up on her head. Maybe it's because they wear the t-shirts Josie bought for them, which are mostly donated from the football team and say NIKE on the front. One angel stands out because they prefer a Pokemon shirt, complete with the slogan in big letters. (Jinny actually went up to that one, one day not long before she left, and tried to explain how maybe the angel wanted to wear a _different_ t-shirt. She returned five minutes later, shaking her head, shoulders slumped. "I couldn't," she said. "It's bad enough to get a normal confused puppy-dog look. When you're getting it from ten different directions on the same being...I'm sorry, I couldn't.")

Angels in Night Vale talk about Rita Hayworth, and bounce in place like they're little kids getting a birthday present. When a City Council representative tries to tell them they don't exist, they pout with three different mouths, and make obscene gestures with their wings, which wasn't a thing Rochelle thought could actually happen until she saw it for herself. If you wind up accidentally trapped in a small room together, which happens twice during Rochelle's first year in Night Vale, they don't just mystically vanish out of there, even though they probably could. Instead, they fold themselves into thirds and sit down next to her, and listen to her ramble about Science until they're rescued (the first time) or Rochelle figures out how to rescue their own damn selves (the second).

It's the black angel, both times. Rochelle isn't sure if this is significant - some kind of solidarity, maybe. She's African-American, yes, but her skin is a nice normal-for-humans brown, three shades lighter than Dana's, not the black of the midnight sky behind the stars. Since Rochelle hasn't started crying while thinking about the angels, she figures she's okay.

*

Angels aren't scary. But they're pretty damn unnerving when they want to be.

They don't actually have to walk anywhere - they just do it to be polite to Josie. Sometimes they appear out of nowhere, spreading out their long fingers in benediction, and smiling that closed-mouth smile, and Rochelle remembers her preacher saying there was a reason why angels always had to say _be not afraid_ when they appeared. They glow this black light, a darkness that's somehow clear and luminescent, that makes Rochelle's knees wobbly with terrified awe at the same time that it makes her brain itch because dammit light and darkness doesn't _work_ like that. Except in Night Vale.

If they want you to join them, the only warning you get is the uncontrollable tears. And even that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Cecil cried when he spoke to an angel on the phone. Larry Leroy cried, as the angels vanished and the yellow helicopters appeared. Neither of them grew wings.

(Unless something did happen, and everyone has forgotten. The Glow Cloud isn't the only thing in town that can alter memories.)

*

"I am afraid," the angel says on the radio, and pauses.

"Yes, go on," Cecil says.

"No, that's it. Just - I am afraid."

There are many, many things to fear in Night Vale. The Dog Park, the Whispering Forest, what the City Council will do to you if you don't have your weekly slice at Big Rico's - death and destruction in forms both vast and terrifyingly, intimately small. There's no reason Rochelle, curled up on the couch in the lab's break room, listening to the radio, should shiver, as if the angel's words are somehow too much.

She wraps the dinosaur blanket (brought in by Carlos) closer around her, and huddles under its warmth, and listens to the radio. During the weather, she gets up and goes out into the lab. Pearl is bent over a spectroscope, and discussing the preliminary results with Jane Smith, who's perched on a lab stool and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, instead of the suit she used to wear when the Miskatonic group first arrived. They look up as Rochelle comes in, and Pearl goes over, hugging Rochelle. "It'll be fine," she says, as Rochelle buries her face in Pearl's hijab.

"No, it won't," Rochelle says automatically, at the same time as Jane Smith. Pearl laughs silently, and doesn't let go. 

*

Angels are real.

Angels are dangerous.

Angels are tall, elongated creatures with too many mouths and too many eyes, who glow with a light that doesn't obey any of the laws of physics or astronomy or _light_ , and who can speak like a human or with the clarion shout of trumpets in their voice. 

Rochelle, bound and gagged and abandoned like so much cordwood on the ground of the 'Company Picnic,' feels a brush against her arm. She rolls over toward it, expecting it to be more Strex bullshit. Instead, as she moves, her bindings melt away, and she sees...robes? She sits up awkwardly, all pins-and-needles as feeling returns to her hands and legs, and looks up.

The black angel brushes their fingers against her arm again, and smiles down at her with a mouth full of sharp teeth. 

_Peace on earth to those of good will. Which does not include Strex or those who sold their souls to them._

_To the rest of you - be not afraid._


	6. Remember to Breathe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An exercise in contrasts: in which Carlos proves conclusively that it doesn't matter if you're not in a relationship with Cecil yet, or have happily been involved with him for months now, sometimes you still need to tell yourself to just breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALL THE CECIL AND CARLOS FLUFF. ALL OF IT. Because as I write, Carlos is still missing, and so I will write my own happily-ever-during. Also, the rating goes up here, because of smut. I'm not sure if this counts as 'finally' or not.

Cecil had suggested they meet at the Starbucks halfway between the lab and the radio station. The Starbucks offered the best coffee in town, although since its only reliably existent competition was the Moonlite All Nite Diner (which served, well, diner coffee), that didn't say much. Carlos had agreed, partially because clocks and time and _people need to know_ , how did they not realize, and partially because he hadn't seen Cecil in a while. He listened to the show, of course, but it wasn't the same.

Carlos stopped at the lab on his way, to drop off the failed - the extra clocks he'd brought home. Pearl answered the door. "You're on your way to coffee with Cecil."

"Yes, of course --"

"Come inside," she said, grabbing his wrist and tugging lightly. "There's something you should hear."

This was Pearl, Pearl the quiet and peaceful who did not grab people's wrists at all in Carlos's experience. He followed her inside.

He arrived at the Starbucks, ordered, and sat down. Breathe. He could breathe. Cecil would be here soon, for their 'date' that wasn't a date, dammit, Carlos wasn't even sure if he was _staying_ in Night Vale past June, he wasn't going to be That Guy to Cecil, who deserved - stop, Carlos reminded himself. Breathe. He had to be calm and scientific and focused on just getting the numbers for the Sheriff and the Mayor's office, because time didn't work, not just in a 'we're possibly in a different dimension than the rest of the world' sort of way, but in a 'our clocks are not even clocks how are they working what sort of time are they telling _can I trust anything in Night Vale at all if I can't even trust clocks_ ' sort of way --

 _Breathe_. Calm. Scientific. 

The barista called his name (well, she called 'Carlos the Scientist,' but Carlos had given up on that one months ago), and he went up to the counter for his coffee. Starbucks had somehow found the sweet spot between Outside World Normal and Night Vale Normal. They offered four different brewed coffees: light, dark, Extra Dark, and Void. You could get espresso added to your coffee, or a pump of vanilla, or three and a half pumps of spider's blood. Their tea selection, according to Pearl and Lexie, ranged even farther into the Night Vale side of things. Carlos hadn't asked for samples.

Their regular dark coffee was good, though. Carlos drank it with as much sugar as he could add without actually turning it into syrup, a habit he'd picked up in grad school.

He'd just finished stirring in a last spoonful of sugar when Cecil came in. Cecil glanced around quickly, that automatic surroundings-check that everyone did in Night Vale, then spotted Carlos. His entire face lit up. "Carlos! Hi!"

"Hi," Carlos said. _Don't look at me like that, this isn't a date._ He had to say it now, immediately, or else he'd lose his courage and not say it at all. Was it a crime in Night Vale to lead someone on, even accidentally? Probably - everything else seemed to be. "Um, Cecil -"

"Hold on a moment," Cecil promised him, and went over to the barista to order. 

Carlos looked around for a table - some place not quite as central as the table where he'd first sat down. Unfortunately, he hadn't spotted one by the time Cecil had finished ordering (plain black coffee, same as usual) and came over to join him again. "I am so sorry. You were saying?"

"I was - " Carlos took a breath. He should have written down what to say before hand. He was good at talking when he knew exactly what he intended to say. Otherwise he blurted, or rambled. "I didn't call you for personal reasons, Cecil. This isn't a date." The words came out even worse than they'd sounded in his mind, and he winced at the sound of them.

Cecil gestured toward a table, over by the wall. For a moment, Carlos thought he somehow hadn't heard what Carlos said, which meant Carlos had to somehow say it _again_. He sat down. Cecil joined him a moment later, his newly poured cup of coffee in his hands. He glanced up at Carlos as he sat down, then looked back down at his coffee. "I knew," he said, apparently as much to the coffee as to Carlos. "I hoped, was all."

"I'm sorry," Carlos said.

Cecil shook his head, and looked up at Carlos through those ridiculously long eyelashes of his. "Perfect Carlos."

"Stop that," Carlos said gently, and then bit his tongue, because he'd nearly added, _I'm not perfect, you are._ He just managed to turn down Cecil, again. He _couldn't_ flirt with him, not here, not now, probably not ever. The words weren't even true, scientifically speaking. Cecil wasn't handsome or ugly any more than he was tall or short, or fat or thin.

Except…

Sitting here, looking at Cecil, Carlos felt as if time had stopped after all. Cecil was beautifully average, the sort of person you wouldn't notice in the street despite the dye streaks in his hair. Cecil wasn't tall or short, but exactly the right height to kiss without Carlos having to duck his head awkwardly or crane his neck up (theoretically). He wasn't fat or thin, but deliciously sturdy, with a nicely rounded ass Carlos hadn't even realized he'd noticed under Cecil's tunics. 

He wasn't ugly. He wasn't handsome, the way Carlos vaguely knew that some people - that Cecil - thought Carlos was. But the way he smiled with his whole face when Carlos talked with him, or scowled because Steve Carlsberg had existed at him - the way he _spoke_ , with that _voice_ -

"Carlos?"

Carlos might be leaving in four months. He'd just turned the man down, again. There must be a worse time to realize that he, personally, thought Cecil _was_ beautiful, whatever science might say. His brain had frozen up, however, and time refused to start again, and he couldn't breathe.

* * *

Carlos and Lexie return from yet another attempted recalibration of the seismographs to find the lab in mild chaos. There's been another Incident in town, according to Dave. Something about the Walk signs. "Not all that big, barely even budged the Danger Meter. But the radio went kinda wonky."

"Because of the Walk signs?"

Dave glances back over his shoulder, then lowers his voice a little. "Because Dana's voice kept interrupting."

" _Dana_?" Lexie repeats, eyes going wide.

"Rochelle's going over the recordings now," Dave says. "But you might want to talk to your boyfriend, boss. He got caught up in the Walk stuff, so I'm not sure if he even heard the Dana stuff."

Cecil, according to the text waiting on Carlos's phone, has gone home to Cecil's own apartment, and Carlos should come over when he was done at the lab. Carlos lets himself in with the key Cecil has given him, "until we find _our_ place." This time the lock doesn't demand any extra drops of blood to open.

Carlos finds Cecil sprawled out over the bed, half-naked, face mashed into the quilt. Carlos pauses in the doorway, looking over his motionless boyfriend: no new wounds, no blood. Pale streaks of scars against the warm brown of Cecil's back, but Carlos knows those scars. He sees no new ones. 

"Carlos?" Cecil says, muffled but still intelligible.

"It's me," Carlos says. "I'm getting the massage oil."

"Mmph," Cecil says into the quilt, then raises his head a little. "Legs first?" He kicks his feet in the air, as if his slacks would slide off on their own.

Carlos helps the slacks off, then goes to get the massage oil. The smell changes every time they use it: this time, to his private relief, it smells of pine, instead of blood, or some bizarre combination like cotton and onion. He breathes it in, and feels himself relax, some part he hadn't realized was tense.

As requested, he starts with Cecil's legs, gentle at first to see how sensitive Cecil is today, then harder to work out the knots. As Carlos works, Cecil tells him about what had happened with the Walk signs, occasionally interrupting himself with a groan when Carlos hits a particularly sensitive spot, or with a tangent off onto other news of the day. Carlos gradually moves up, from legs, to Cecil's beautifully rounded ass, up to Cecil's back and tense shoulders. By the time Cecil finishes, Carlos sits on Cecil's upper thighs so he can rub Cecil's back in long strokes, all the way up, all the way down. If he lingers over Cecil's ass, well, it's not like it's any secret that he loves those perfect curves. It hasn't been a secret for a long time now.

Cecil wriggles under Carlos's hands, and says, "Why, Mr. Ramirez, are you seducing me?"

"I hadn't intended to," Carlos says honestly. "I would have taken off _my_ clothing first."

"Then you should do that. Or I could help you." Cecil shifts, and Carlos gets up to his knees so Cecil can roll over. Cecil grins up at him, and there's no tension-lines on his forehead or around his eyes now. "I could even seduce _you_ , if you prefer." Cecil waggles his eyebrows.

Carlos laughs, and leans down again to kiss him. "Let's do that," he murmurs.

As seductions go, it's not in their top ten. (The fact that they _have_ a top ten is amazing to the part of Carlos that still can't quite believe either Night Vale or Cecil.) Carlos has to get off the bed entirely to shuck slacks and lab coat and t-shirt. Cecil sprawls on the bed, watching, but his lidded eyes looks as much sleepy as they do seductive. Carlos remembers that he meant to tell Cecil about Dana's interruptions. Later, he decides. Afterwards.

After what, is the question. The oil's gotten everywhere. It would be so easy to slide inside Cecil and hear that beautiful voice shiver, or to straddle Cecil again and ask to be taken. He loves the slow delicious not-quite-pain of Cecil inside him. But both of those require effort, despite the helpful oil. Instead, Carlos climbs onto the bed again, and lies down against Cecil, and kisses him again.

They kiss and grind against each other, slowly, letting it build. Cecil murmurs in Carlos's ear, the kind of macabre, absurd poetry that's only love-talk in Night Vale. "Beautiful," he says, but also, "Come with me, let yourself merge with me," and, "I wish I could taste you - your blood, your semen, your flesh," and finally, "Harder, please, _Carlos_ \--" He breaks off, his voice cracking mid-word, as he comes against Carlos's skin. 

Carlos keeps moving, unable to stop now. Cecil moves under him, pushing up against Carlos's thrusts, and breathes into his ear, "Come - crack yourself open for me, my Carlos, let me see you come." And Carlos does.

Afterwards, they lie there, wrapped around each other. They should be uncomfortable, Carlos thinks sleepily. Time hasn't actually stopped. They _will_ be uncomfortable eventually, from the weight and the heat and the stickiness. Carlos will get up, and they'll wash off and make dinner and he'll tell Cecil about Dana. But for now, they lie there, and breathe in the calm.


	7. From A Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Long-distance relationships are hard. Long-distance relationships where attempting to e-mail your girlfriend (who's in another dimension) has a 67% chance of causing your phone to spontaneously combust, vanish in your hand, or start wailing hideous ghostly groans? Even harder. Good thing Rochelle is stubborn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers up through The Old Oak Door - A (and here's hoping that I don't immediately get contradicted by part B). Written for everyone who ships Dana/Rochelle (or Dana/Maureen, or Dana/Vithya) - here's to you, fellow lovers of queer Dana!

From Rochelle's text messages:

**This is Dana from NVCR. I found one of the tapes you were looking for, if you'd still like to come by and pick them up.**

_Sure, thank you! Do I need to check in with Cecil first, or can I just ask for you?_

**Cecil's not in charge of the tape library. I'm not sure who is, actually, but I've signed it out, so you can ask for me.**

_I don't want to get you in trouble._

**No trouble at all! I chose to be an intern at NVCR, rather than Town Hall or the Secret Police or the Daily Journal. I know the risks. Besides, this way I get to meet interesting people, like you.**

_You're amazing. I'll be right over._

*

To: rbuckley2@miskatonic.edu  
From: dana@nvcr.com  
Date: February 13, 2013  
Subject: Re: Valentine's Day

>  
>

I'm glad. You've been very lucky - you personally, but also all the rest of the scientists with whom you work. I grew up in Night Vale, and everyone takes the elective on repelling evil spirits by at least junior year in high school. From what you've said, you never had any training at all, so at first - well. You know what I thought at first.

On Valentine's Day itself, I'm going to be at the station - Stacey is still missing, so Cecil has asked for my help. The spirits of Valentine never linger past the dawn of the next day, however, so if you'd still like to meet up, and go for the 'something more than coffee' you mentioned, I would be definitely available.

\- Dana

*

To: dana@nvcr.com  
From: rbuckley2@miskatonic.edu  
Date: April 16, 2013  
Subject: Seventh time lucky

Add to the list of "things I should've asked you about": IT in Night Vale. There's a ban on 'computing machines' in the school, but all the adults seem to have smart-phones and email. Is it one of those childhood versus adulthood things? Is it just kind of a gray area? If so, who's responsible for IT? Is this another of those things where the Sheriff's Secret Police just does it and everyone pretends they don't?

Sorry. This isn't why I'm writing to you.

I've been trying to email you, or text you, or call you, for the past two weeks. Maybe it's useless - you're not the only one who vanished into the Dog Park, and I'm not the only one left behind. It's not like it's unusual in Night Vale to be left behind. But I don't believe that you're dead. I refuse to believe it. 

(Dave says you should be glad you didn't get those previous texts, though. Especially the ones right after. I know you said you were looking forward to my poetry, but I am really, really not a poet. None of us are - Carlos comes the closest, and only if you catch him off guard. I'm pretty sure my phone self-destructed just to defend you from my really bad poetry, not because of where you are.)

Shit. This shouldn't be this hard.

I asked Old Woman Josie to put a good word in, and I asked Jane Smith to put a good word in, and I left flourless chocolate cake on a plate next to the Dog Park, because I don't know anyone who doesn't like flourless chocolate cake, so maybe it'll put the Hooded Figures in a good mood. And I'm trying again. If I blow up the computer trying, well, I'll fix it.

I miss you. I want...I want to talk to you, really talk to you. I had plans for us, and I don't mean 'creepy stone table' kind of plans. More like 'comfy big bed' plans, and things I wanted to say that I'm not saying in an email that I don't even know you'll get.

Be safe, Dana. Be *alive*.

\- Rochelle

*

_First saved message:_

"Rochelle, this is Dana. I'm still in the Dog Park, but I've been talking to the man in the tan jacket, and he suggested that if I walk as far away from the monolith as I could, then my cell reception should improve. I walked for three hours, and never found a rear wall to the Dog Park, although from the outside it's only a single city block long. When I paused to look back at the monolith, my phone buzzed for the first time in months. I don't know how my phone still charged, or still working at all, but I just recieved all your emails, and Cecil's emails, and all the text messages everyone has sent over the past several weeks.

"I tried to call Cecil first, but my phone refused to connect. I don't know why. But my phone did connect to yours, or at least gave me your voice-mail. I'll try to call Cecil again later.

"I _am_ alive. I'm still hungry, but the food that was thrown over the wall helped, and also I've gotten less hungry as time goes on. I'm not certain if this means I am dying, or if I'm changing somehow, if perhaps the Dog Park is forbidden because it changes those who come too close, or if it's a portal to another world where the rules of hunger and death are different. I remember you speculating that there are several portals in Night Vale, tipping points where one universe becomes another, without any kind of signpost to warn the unwary. I don't know if this is what has happened, but I can find out.

"You told me once, the first time we met for coffee, that you didn't want me to become an experiment. But I can be a scientist. I can go on, and find out, and write down what I've found out, and tell you or Cecil.

"I will see you again. I haven't forgotten. 

"I love you. I didn't tell you before, and I'm sorry. I love you anyway.

"Good-bye."

_End of message._

*

_Fucking dammit, Dana, you do not get to tell me you love me in a voice-mail where I can't even say it back!_

_I love you. Find your way back, or I'm finding a way there._

_I don't even know if you're getting these texts. Shit._

*

To: dana@nvcr.com  
From: rbuckley2@miskatonic.edu  
Date: October 20, 2013  
Subject: Question

Does your phone receive Cecil's show?

Everything else is uncertain. I don't even know if this email will go through - the last time I tried, I exploded both my phone and Lexie's. (Again.) But I have to know. We have to find a way to communicate. Things are happening, Dana, and I don't trust them.

Be safe.

\- Rochelle

*

**Sometimes I get Cecil's show. My phone will just start playing it, as if the radio waves found me from nowhere. But not always. Not often.**

**I'm trying to find a way back. Or at least a way to speak to those of you who are still there.**

**I miss you. I miss everyone - my family, my friends, Cecil. I've found new people, new friends, but you can't replace people as if they were things.**

*

_Are you there?_

_Are you safe?_

_We've been focusing on the House that Doesn't Exist. At first it was because it was safe - something Strex wasn't interested in, I mean. Then, after the whole thing with the oranges and John Peters -_

_(Did you hear that show? Did you get my email? I never know if you'll hear me. We're both yelling into the wind and hoping it'll sweep our words where we want them to go.)_

**You *can* do poetry.**

_DANA._

**Call me.**

_But!_

**Time isn't real. Causality sometimes works backwards. I know we have spoken, or will speak, or are speaking now. Please. Call me.**

*

To: dana@nvcr.com  
From: rbuckley2@miskatonic.edu  
Date: April 23, 2014  
Subject: In all the wrong places

I tried to follow you yesterday, into that other world. But the doors in the House That Doesn't Exist wouldn't open. It was only endless pictures of windows, and time dilating. I don't know why the fuck I was surprised by that - this is Night Vale. Like you said, like the boss-man said, time doesn't work here. It hiccups, and runs, and tumbles around backward and forward.

In some ways, it does work. I know it's been more than a year since we saw each other. Wanna go out for coffee when you get back?

Carlos is going in next. Maybe the doors will open for him. If he does - if you can - find him, or let him find you.

Things are happening here. Things are changing. I can't talk more about it, partially because I don't know who'll read this email before you do, and partially because I don't know. (To quote the boss-man, sometimes selective ignorance is also part of being a scientist.) But one thing hasn't changed: I still want to have that long talk with you, sprawled out over a big bed, naked and unashamed.

I still love you.

\- Rochelle

*

"Hello." 

Rochelle looks up sharply, scrambling to her feet. She's been hiding, looking for the resistance, but the angels are gone and she's had no luck finding people she trusts. If she's been found - well, she doesn't have anything but a pocket knife, but she knows how to fuck someone up with a knife.

There's no one there. Rochelle turns around slowly. Did she imagine it? In Night Vale, it's not impossible for voices to speak out of nowhere, but usually there are signs --

"Over here, Rochelle," the voice says, gently, from a shadow in the corner of the lean-to. "It's Dana."

Rochelle tries to say Dana's name, but it sticks in her throat and comes out not much more than a squeak. Eh, fuck it: she's a scientist, not a radio personality. She reaches out. "You're back!"

As Rochelle's hand passes through Dana's arm, Dana says, "Not yet."

"Oh," Rochelle says, and bites the inside of her cheek. She's not the emotional type, but the tears are trying to well up, and she will not fucking cry in front of her girlfriend, she won't. "I get it. Moving your head a touch to the left?"

"Yes," Dana says. "There's still something...but Carlos is here, and he's helping."

"That's, um. That's good." It is. Carlos is the best at the kind of improvising, and combining ideas from wildly divergent sources, that science in Night Vale requires, although Pearl's pretty close. That doesn't mean that Rochelle doesn't still wish intensely that it was her there. "I heard," she adds. "On the radio."

"Of course you would." Dana looks away, and maybe that's a blush on her face - it's hard to see in the shadows and uncertainty. 

"Heard you talking about missing your family," Rochelle says. "You still want to go for coffee?"

"I'm not Cecil," Dana says. She raises her head, puts her shoulders back. She looks like she's facing an army, instead of just a woman in dirty jeans, a tank top, and a lab coat stained with her own blood. "I don't want my personal life on the radio. And there's still the Smiling God on the horizon. But after that --"

"Yeah," Rochelle says. "I get that. I just - I want to _help_."

She doesn't expect the glowing grin she gets. "You're a scientist," Dana says, as if she's saying, _you're a superhero_. "You're right by the Public Library, and Tamika Flynn is free. You'll come up with something."

"And then?" Rochelle says, because she can't not press. It's been so long.

"And then," Dana says. She glances away, then back again. "I must go."

"I get it. I love you."

It's been over a year, and all they've had is disjointed emails, text messages out of sequence, and a few frustrating phone calls. But Dana still smiles back again, and says, "I love you too. Soon," as she fades back into the other world.

Rochelle tucks away the pocket knife, and walks out of the lean-to. The Public Library looms up in front of her. She's never been in. She just came here because even the Strex-bots are still scared of Librarians.

Tamika is free, huh? Well. Maybe Rochelle can ask for some help to go back to the Picnic. She's been running scared and uncertain for too long. Her girlfriend is finally coming home. Time to be a scientist.

-end-


	8. Job Security

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not that Carlos has never been to Night Vale General Hospital. It's just that when he's gone, it's been because someone is bleeding, poisoned, unable to breathe, or all three, so he's more familiar with the emergency room than the front door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for missing last week - RL commitments messed with my writing availability! Here, have some Carlos, just before canon tells us what happened two weeks ago.

Night Vale General Hospital looks normal from the outside: red brick, squarish, several stories high, NIGHT VALE GENERAL HOSPITAL in big letters on the side. No otherworldly stone walls, or ominous chanting coming from the roof. (Well, there _was_ that once, but officially that didn't happen, and anyway it was just one time, what's your problem.) It looks normal on the inside, too. Not that Carlos has a lot of experience with other hospitals to compare it to. 

This is the first time he's come in the front door, instead of the emergency room. On the bright side, this means a lot less screaming. On the down side, there's no voice from speakers up above telling him immediately what he's expected to do. It takes him a second to figure out that he has to go up to the main desk, and explain who he is and why he's here. He sort of hopes he's wrong, because the person behind the desk has three mouths (one in the human-normal position, one across her neck that appears to literally stretch from ear to ear, and one just above the neckline of her scrubs, which keeps licking its lips unnervingly).

He's not wrong. On the bright side, the nurse (if that's what she is) smiles with all three of her mouths, and strikes a small bell on the desk, which reverberates in Carlos's ears much more loudly than he'd expect from such a small bell. When his ears stop ringing, there's a girl, maybe ten years old, standing in front of him, dressed in red and white with a gun slung across her back. "Hi! I'm Daisy!"

Daisy chatters blithely as she guides him up the four flights of stairs. Apparently she just joined the Girl Scouts a few months ago, and she's earning her Hunting Malevolent Spirits badge. "Most of the girls go to one of the graveyards," she confides, "but that's mostly just ghosts, and ghosts aren't qualified as Malevolent Spirits unless they commit three acts of sedition or one of treason per quarter. Momma said that hospitals _attract_ Malevolent Spirits, though, so I wanted to come here. Plus it counts toward my internship credits!"

She shows him into the room, then leaves. Carlos doesn't blame her. It's a quarantine room. Half the room is sealed off with glass, with filtered air vents up near the ceiling, and there are signs warning visitors not to approach the glass. The man on the other side of the glass is no Hannibal Lecter, though. He's perched on his bed, concentrating on something he's writing. The man is skinny as the scarecrow out on John Peters' farm of invisible corn, and wears almost the same outfit. Carlos finds the plaid reassuring. Most people in Night Vale wear t-shirts advertising bands or products Carlos has never heard of, or odd combinations that he assumes are fashionable, not good old-fashioned comfortable flannel or plaid. (Then again, it's a desert.)

The man finally looked up and notices Carlos. He smiles an inhumanly wide smile. Carlos doesn't flinch. He's seen inhumanly wide smiles too often in the past six months to be startled by them any more. 

"So they've brought in a new expert," the man says, standing up and moving toward the glass.

Carlos had opened his mouth to introduce himself. He shuts it again, then tries, "Sorry?"

"First they tried rest. Then they tried poison. They'd change out my throat entirely if they could, but they haven't been able to find a compatible donor." The man coughs. A spider falls to the floor and skitters toward one of the air filters. The man lunges for it and misses. He snarls after it, a sound even less human than his smile, then whirls back to Carlos. "Do you have some sort of great insight on the arachnids of the throat? Careful, if you talk too much about it, they might come seek you out."

"No," Carlos says honestly. "Actually, Dr. Eisenberg, I came to talk to you about flying dinosaurs."

Joel Eisenberg blinks at Carlos, as if he's frozen into place as some kind of skeletal statue (not impossible in Night Vale). "Flying dinosaurs."

"Yes."

"Not throat spiders."

"No. Although I'll look into a throat replacement. I might need one too, if throat spiders are attracted by talking about science."

Joel waves that off with an impatient gesture of one bony hand. "If you catch it early enough, you can just replace your vocal cords and you're good for at least another year or two. I just put it off too long. But flying dinosaurs! What kind of flying dinosaur did you want to know about?"

"The kind that used to exist around here," Carlos says gravely. "There was an incident a few months ago..."

Joel smiles again. It's still wider than a normal human smile, but this one is a smile Carlos recognizes. There's not a scientist born that doesn't love to talk about his or her specialty.

Carlos has learned to de-specialize, here in Night Vale. After the incident with the pyramid, he'd been glad. But now, watching Joel, Carlos realizes how distracted he let himself get. Maybe he should go back to the question of time in Night Vale, after all. Maybe there's still something that he could learn from his own specialty here.


	9. L-Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which books are dangerous, the library is unstable, and Tamika wants to know why one of the scientists is talking to her. (Or maybe why they took so long.)

10-7-13

School's still the same, so far. Tamika saw a woman in a tan suit talking with the principal, and heard the yelling when the principal threw the woman out of the school - the principal yelling, that is, not the woman. Near as Tamika's seen, nobody from Desert Bluffs ever yells. 

Doesn't matter. Tamika's got eyes to see what's coming. She's put the word out to the other kids. They've been kidnapped before, and they know how to fake compliance to the adults (or adult-like beings). But she also knows that if you fake compliance too long, it becomes real. She figures that there might be a reason why she could take down the Head Librarian, when all City Council ever thought to do was burn down the Library over and over again. If Strex does take over the town - and they're already halfway there, no matter how much the principal yells - it's gonna be the kids who'll have to fight back.

She keeps a look out when she emerges from school, and that's why she sees the scientist waiting for her.

Janis rolls up next to her, gun lying ready in her lap. Tamika gives her the hand signal to _hold, await orders_. She's been expecting someone to make contact, when the adults figured out what she already knew. The guy on the radio made too big a deal about her for her to be ignored. She's even known it was gonna have to be the Outsider scientists who talked to her. She hadn't known _which_ scientist, though. She'd kinda figured she'd get either the head scientist, or the one who carries a gun. Instead, it's the short one with a head covering, who always wears long sleeves no matter how hot it gets.

"Tamika Flynn?"

"Yup," Tamika says. "And this is Janis Carlsberg."

"Hi," Janis says. She's watching the scientist, eyes narrowed like her step-dad. Then she suddenly smiles, and tucks her gun away. Her free hand signals _all clear_ , down next to the chair where the scientist can't see. 

They walk along a little way, talking about homework (nobody's found vimby yet, and there's rumors the official history of Night Vale is gonna change _again_ , so their history teacher has been really stressed and prone to throwing students out the window). Finally they reach the turn-off where Janis goes home and Tamika goes off to the Sand Wastes to train.

The scientist follows her. They walk silently for a few minutes, then the scientist says, "I'm Dr. Pearl Alnasseri, from Miskatonic University. I apologize for showing up without warning --"

"Eh, we're used to it."

"Mmm." Dr. Alnasseri glances off to their left. They're just passing the library. "I wanted to talk to you about your experiences."

Tamika blinks. "What experiences?" She thought this was gonna be about the yellow helicopters and Strex.

"Your experiences in the library," Dr. Alnasseri says. "We haven't studied it in detail as of yet, and under the current circumstances, I believe that is a dangerous ignorance."

*

7-13-12

"...trying to triangulate the possible trans-dimensional vertices, and also verify the official town maps we were given. Pearl's got the map, which is a relief because my sense of direction is shit in the first place, and she's notin' down where things actually are."

[In the background: "For today."]

"For today, yeah. No signs so far that the roads actually _change_ , but we haven't been here long enough to rule any possibility _out_. Anyway. To repeat, so far we've got a possible in the Dog Park, another one out near the car lot, and readings I can't figure by City Hall and the radio station. Maybe trans-dimensional, maybe not, no fuckin' idea. Nothing by the TV station, nothin' by the one church we've seen so far, and nothin' by the House That Doesn't Exist, because why the fuck should it make sense. [off-mike] Sorry, Pearl."

["Don't worry, I've become accustomed to it."]

"Anyway. Next up, local library. Sign out front sayin' NIGHT VALE PUBLIC LIBRARY. Square building, adobe brick, single story, no parking lot. One door - sorry, double door - on this side. Windows. [off-mike] I dunno, looks like a library."

["Looks like a library?"]

"Looks like _our_ library back _home_ looked, all right? More normal'n City Hall. C'mon, it's a Friday. Should be open."

[Different voice: "I'm sorry, the library is not open today."]

"It's not? Is somethin' wrong?"

["Yes, the books aren't working."]

"The books - uh. Okay. Is there anything we can do to help? I'm Dr. Lexie Dillard, and this is Dr. Pearl Alnasseri. We're from Miskatonic University -"

["The scientists. With Carlos. I've heard about you on the radio."]

"...yeah, that's us. Anyway -"

["No, sorry. The books are dangerous today. Our general reference books emit poisonous gas, the general fiction smells of meat left out in the sun too long, and our young adult section has begun to bite."]

"Wait, _literally_ biting?"

["Of course. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go put our mysteries into a water bath - they've begun emitting sparks, and are in danger of burning themselves."]

"Sure, thanks - aaaand she's gone. What the hell."

["Mmm."]

"I noticed _you_ didn't say anythin', Pearl."

["I was thinking of how many reference books we have back at the lab, and wondering if this was a lie to drive us away, or a general problem."]

"Shit. _Shit_."

["Do you remember the way back?"]

[off-mike] "Race you."

*

10-7-13

Tamika frowns down at the recorder in Dr. Alnasseri's hand, that just clicked off. "But that's not what the library looks like," she says. "That's not the library at all." The library has no windows, even after the Council's renovations, and it's more than one story, and was that supposed to be a librarian's _voice_? Librarians could talk, sure, but they didn't talk like normal people, and they couldn't - or at least didn't - leave the library, not even to just outside the front door.

"Not to you," Dr. Alnasseri agrees calmly. "Not now. Night Vale changes without anyone noticing - perhaps beyond the capacity of human ability to notice. Certain buildings always exist, like City Hall or the radio station or the library. But sometimes they are built of granite, and sometimes of bloodstone, and sometimes of adobe brick, and sometimes of darkness as if formed out of the void itself."

"Seriously?"

"We have records of the radio station appearing to be built of each of those in turn over the course of a two week period," Dr. Alnasseri says. "It then settled into its current combination of adobe with doors and windows of bloodstone. Likewise, the library shifts and changes, beyond the regular attempts to burn it down. We believe the reason it reappears regularly might be that it is a _source_ of those changes."

*

September 10, 2012, Peter McCloud, just in case we ever get around to transcribing these reports.

Nothing to report. Lexie says the seismographs still register earthquakes we can't feel, Rochelle and Adam can't find the nerve to ring the damn doorbell on that damn house, and the guy with a crush on our boss literally got a guy driven out of town because he didn't like the boss's new hair-cut. Oh, yeah, and I haven't seen my primary source in three weeks. Everyone I've asked says, "Good riddance." I don't even know if he's still alive. 

This morning I asked Pearl, because she was around. She's been getting friendly with that Jane Smith, so she should know things. She didn't suggest the Secret Police, though, she suggested we go to the _library_. "You're not the only one with local sources," she says.

Okay, fine. Went to the library. Square building, couple stories high, white pillars out front - kinda like the Greendale library back home, except smaller and less windows. Pearl's 'source' turns out to be this woman who works at the library - Lena, she said her name was. Curly brown hair, wears glasses and has that librarian's trick of looking over them, pale pink skin. Freckles. Smelled like coffee. 

Pearl asked Lena something about books. I went off to browse so she could get as much info out of her source as possible. Could barely see the books on the shelves - the lighting sucked there, which isn't a surprise because I haven't been to a public building yet in Night Vale with good lighting, including the TV station. No wonder everyone prefers the radio.

Gave up on looking at their fiction section after a while. Trying to read in that dim light gave me a headache. Non-fiction looked better lit, so I headed over there. I grabbed something off the shelf at random, and then I heard a whispering. 

The whisper said - fuck, this is gonna sound like one of those half-assed ghost stories. But I swear, it kept saying, "He's here, he's here, he's here." 

"Who's here?" I asked.

I heard a gasp, and a moment of silence. Then the whisper started up again: "Come here, come here, come here, come _here_ \--"

Someone grabbed my arm, and I jumped. It wasn't any kind of ghost, though, just Lena the librarian. Except taller somehow, tall as I was. Pretty sure I remembered her being a head shorter than me. "If you're finished," she said, and pulled at my arm so I got towed along to the front door, whether I wanted to be or not.

I asked who that was, what was going on, and she just said, "Another patron. It doesn't like to be disturbed." Next thing I knew, I'd been pushed out the open door and was standing out in front of those stupid brick pillars. Pearl was waiting, a bag slung over her shoulder, full of books. I turned back around to say something - I don't even remember what - just in time to see the door slam shut.

"What the hell?" I said.

"We _are_ still in Night Vale," Pearl said, and started walking toward the lab.

I followed, because I'm not fucking stupid. "Did you even find anyone out about where _my_ source went?"

"Yes," Pearl said. "He's away. I'm trying to learn more." She shrugged the shoulder carrying the bag of books.

I saw those books when she unloaded the bag, back at the lab. I don't know what the fuck she's trying to learn - it was all books of Robert Frost and Maya Angelou and Shel Fucking Silverstein. I'm giving her three days, and then I'm going back to the library - by myself if I have to - and figuring out what the fuck is going on here.

*

10-7-13

"That's not what the library looks like either," Tamika says, but it's not as firm as it was the last time. She fights the urge to go back and look again.

"It changes," Dr. Alnasseri repeats. 

"And the Librarians don't look like that either." 

"Not any more."

"So what's your point, here? Just that things change?" Tamika shoves her hand into her pocket. The withered hand that she wears on a strap around her neck feels heavier than usual. She took down the Head Librarian, but it took study and strategy. If the Librarians could change - really change? _Shit_.

"That things _can_ change," Dr. Alnasseri corrects her. "And that the library is a focal point. The Summer Reading Program isn't the only example, it's merely the most recent."

*

3-3-13 - as per transcript of SSP listening device 42MLA, and testimony of Sgt. JS

All Miskatonic scientists were present. 

D and R: working on five-dimensional modeling of theory regarding House That Does Not Exist  
C: completing Council paperwork  
P: reading (see exemption on file)  
L: correlating seismograph data  
A: typing an updated list of currently acknowledged Night Vale phenomena. 

A pushed back from his desk. "Goddammit!"

C glanced up. "What now?"

"The Traveller," A said. "We're gonna have to go back and double-check _all_ our data, and we don't even know if he actually changed anything."

"He changed _something_ ," D said, glancing up from his computer screen. "The last time I checked, it still takes nine months for a human to give birth. Even in Night Vale. But despite his appearance and disappearance all occurring within a single perceived week, his wife gave birth to a full-term baby boy."

"Unless the dimensional shifts are recurring - small shifts, nearly constantly," P suggested, without looking up from her book.

Momentary silence, as all scientists looked at P as if awaiting further explanation. R said, "And the connection to the Traveller is?"

"A symptom, not a cause," P said.

"Might explain the earthquakes," L said, turning away from her computer. "Where's the data?"

"The library," P said. She lay down her book (now clearly shown to be [_Grande Sertao: Veredas_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_to_Pay_in_the_Backlands) by Joao Guimaraes Rosa) and her phone. "I went back and checked both our old reports, and our recordings of Cecil's show. Originally, the Night Vale Public Library seemed to be nothing more than an ordinary library."

"Except for the books that didn't work," L said.

"Night Vale," P said, spreading her hands. She then pointed at L. "According to your report, it reminded you of the library you grew up with. Pete's report said the same thing. Neither of your descriptions matched my own notes."

"Really," C said, sitting up straight. 

P turned to face C. "In September, the library shifted for the first time I can verify. It still had several ordinary aspects - computers for public use, for example, and human librarians. But it also had a faceless specter and a fatality rate."

"Is there anything in Night Vale that _doesn't_ have a fatality rate?" R muttered.

P ignored the question, assuming she heard it (Sgt. JS was uncertain). "Around the first of the year, it shifted again. The front entrance vanished entirely. There are no more public computers or clearly labeled sections. And the librarians...are something to run away from."

"Librarian repellent dispensers," C said, as if repeating something he'd heard.

"Wait, hold on," L protested. "We _met_ a librarian. Short chick, curly hair, glasses, sweater? The one who _told_ us about the broken books?"

"I don't know," P said. One hand reached out and patted the book. "I haven't seen her in weeks. All I can verify is that the library _has_ shifted, twice, before this most recent presumed timeline/dimensional shift."

"Any further verification would mean going into the library, which would mean going in alone, because of the lack of door," D agreed, and grimaced. "Dammit Well, they're building another entrance, so maybe you can find your librarian friend again."

"If she hasn't changed into something non-human," A said.

"You got something against non-humans?" L said.

"Aw, shit," A said. "Not this discussion again!"

"When was the last time you went to the library?" C asked, ignoring his subordinates.

"Last week," P said.

C's eyebrows went up. "You read quickly."

"I've learned," P said, and smiled.

*

"Is that book any good?" Tamika asks curiously.

"Very. But you need to be able to read Portuguese."

"I'll learn," Tamika says, and blinks at the grin on Dr. Alnasseri's face - a Night Vale grin, that looks too wide for a human mouth. You don't usually see that kind of expression on the face of Outsiders. "You didn't go looking for me to make reading suggestions. Or just to ask about the library, either." That last is a guess, but it's an educated one.

"The Summer Reading Program represents the longest anyone has spent inside the Night Vale Public Library in decades," Dr. Alnasseri says, with that same ridiculous patience she's been showing this whole discussion. "The library changes itself, yes, but it also changes other things. Other people."

"Like the Librarians?"

"Like the books. Like the people who _read_ the books."

Tamika checks around them for listening devices and obvious Secret Police, on reflex. They haven't done anything about her and her obvious reading habits yet, but she still doesn't want to just come out and talk about it in public. "I'm listening," she says warily.

"Before you went to the Summer Reading Program, did you know how to fight Librarians?"

"Sorta," Tamika says, then quieter, "Not really. I figured it out while we were in there."

"And how to organize other people into a militia?"

"Somebody had to."

"And how to build explosives? How to read people, so you know what to say and when to say it?" Dr. Alnasseri leans in, and her voice drops to a near whisper. "How to bring down helicopters - and how to _fix_ them, once they're down?"

"I had books," Tamika protests.

"Books of poetry. _Fiction_. Not books on psychology or practical chemistry or military strategy. You set your mind to what you needed to learn, and no matter what you read, you learned it."

Tamika turns this idea over in her head. It doesn't feel _wrong_ , is the thing. "I also learned about story and characterization and language," she points out.

Dr. Alnasseri shrugs. "There's nothing wrong with enjoying reading," she says with a little smile.

Tamika smiles back. "You said you hadn't studied the library," she says.

"We haven't. Study means experiments, and repetition. Would you and your militia be willing to assist us?"

More learning. Understanding things better. More _books_. Tamika sticks out her hand. "You're on," she says, and grins a Night Vale grin too.

**Author's Note:**

> I too am on Tumblr, like the rest of the world - [jennaria.tumblr.com](http://jennaria.tumblr.com). Come join me for reblogs of WTNV fanart and meta, all the cute bunny pictures I can find, and occasional mutterings about writing!


End file.
